⚠ Defaults Are GenerationalModerate threat

A default is a habit, and habits belong to the generation that formed them.

.com's position rests on thirty years in which it was the obvious answer. The people for whom it is obvious learned that in the 1990s and 2000s. The people registering their first domain today grew up with .ai, .io, .xyz and a thousand others visible as normal choices, and with social handles and app listings doing much of the work an address used to do.

The evidence for erosion is in the growth rates rather than the levels. New gTLDs grew 34.0% year over year to 52.9 million registrations while .com and .net grew 5.1% to 179.1 million.¹ Growth rates that different, sustained for long enough, change what the next cohort assumes is normal — and once a business is established on a .shop, the same switching costs that protect VeriSign's base protect somebody else's.

The counter-evidence is fourteen years long: the 2012 round produced more than a thousand alternatives and .com and .net still hold about 45% of every domain name on earth.

The signal would be a large, recognisable company choosing a non-.com as its primary address. It has not happened.